


I'll try to shake this soon

by seeyaloki



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Character Study, M/M, but what did you expect, i mean this ain't happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-15
Updated: 2020-01-15
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:40:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22272715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeyaloki/pseuds/seeyaloki
Summary: Perhaps you have sworn an oath as well, unwittingly and unspoken. A solemn promise disguised as a kiss, concealed threads woven between you and Maedhros as your bodies moved to the same rhythm in the dark.
Relationships: Fingon | Findekáno/Maedhros | Maitimo
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	I'll try to shake this soon

**Author's Note:**

> I've been quite obsessed by the fact that Fingon and Maedhros were destined for wildly different paths, but it never stops Fingon from chasing Maedhros anyway. I'm also slightly obsessed by second person pov, so I indulged. 
> 
> Enjoy!

You are blue, and he has always been red. 

You have been aware of this since the start. Since you met in the great halls of your grandfather, in a land you can't remember the sight of. You clasped arms, firm like your elders taught you, and you did not think you were so different then.  There was a time when you didn't think the colors mattered. That they could drip and mingle and flow together, until they formed a vivid and bold purple, and that you would be stronger for it. 

It was never that simple. You know that now. 

*

When you are young, you and Maedhros swim in the rivers at night, when no one else is around to watch you. Only the silver light and the creatures in the peaceful forest. His laugh echoes loudly through the trees and his eyes shine and flicker when they look at you. 

You long for things to always be like this. But at home, his shoulders are rigid and his back straight and he follows his father like he already knows he will lose him, responsibility and loyalty a dark cloud over his head. So you steal moments like this, drops flying from his chest and his hair a bright forest fire in the night, so young and careless and alive. 

You bid yourself to remember him like this. Just in case, you tell yourself. Just in case time turns you both into something else entirely. 

*

You love him, and you don't really want to, because you know all the reasons why you shouldn't. And you know all the reasons why you will, despite them. 

*

You don't protest when Maedhros leaves, you know you would do the same thing if it were  _ your  _ father banished. But you find him, alone in the dark outside your chambers the night before he's set to leave. His eyes still flicker in the low light of the candles you have lit, and there is a sadness in them now that you don't think will ever disappear again. 

He doesn't say anything for a long time, just sits down in one of the armchairs near the fireplace and looks ahead instead of at you. 

"I'm sorry," he says quietly, you have to move closer to make out the words. 

"For what?" 

He looks at you then and you realize now that he must have woken up in the night and came to find you instead of going back to sleep. 

"You know what. My father, my brothers."

"It is not your fault, Nelyo."

He sighs deeply and stands up. He misbuttoned his sleep shirt. You can see the pale skin of a shoulder and the shape of his collarbone in the dark. 

"But it is my punishment."

He comes to stand in front of you then, and wraps his hands firm around your shoulders, he looks like he's been crying and it pains you to realize it. You think of the fire in Fëanor's eyes as he threatened your father and his fierceness and pride as he took his exile like it was his own plan all along. If he were here to see his eldest son now, defeated in the dark, you think he would not be so proud anymore.

"You can still visit me."

Maedhros smiles and kisses you. It is not the first time he's done this, but it feels like the first time he might regret it. 

"They will not let me, Findekáno."

And you think of red then, and of blue. And it is the first of many times you realize, that it makes all the difference in the world. 

*

It takes years. You meet in secret sometimes, deep in the forest where not even your cousins hunt, but it is not the same. There is no swimming and no laughing, but always a desperate urgency in Maedhros' movements as he grabs you close to him and wraps your legs around his hips. It always feels like a last time. It always feels like Maedhros is going to leave and never come back to you. So you whisper in his ear as he moves closer that you love him and that you will miss him and you beg him to return. 

And you both pretend, though you know better, that if he had to make a choice between you and his father, that he would choose you. 

*

And then, for a moment, it's good. Maedhros is dressed in deep red robes that match his hair and he smiles at you from across the hall. For a moment there is peace, and for a moment you feel as if you have won back something that had been taken. 

But things like this never last. You should have known this by now. 

*

Your grandfather is dead, and your country is dark and you follow Maedhros, foolishly, onto a path that you cannot ever come back from. 

*

There is blood on your sword, and you keep it unclean to remind yourself of the things you've done here and how they will make you pay for them. Maedhros looks at you, and you have never thought he looks like his father, but he looks like him now. Eyes sharp and unforgiving. It is not until he snaps them away from yours and looks around at the death and destruction surrounding him, that you find a sliver of regret on his face. But there is acceptance there as well. Like the fading echoes of screams and the scent of spilled blood are merely parts of this new thing he’s become, and they are never to leave him again. 

You cry now, silently, standing in stained sand upon the grounds of a people beaten down by your own hand, and you think of punishment and how it is both of yours to share now. Your mind is stuck on red once more, and Maedhros is drenched in it. From his hair caught in the wind like a war banner, and his armor the furious colors of his house, to the blood that stains his hands and his wrists and runs all the way up his arms to where splatters of it have hit the sharp lines of his face. He is only a mere bloodied shadow of what you knew him to be before this. And  _ red _ , you almost say,  _ the color suits you far too well _ . But Maedhros only drags his eyes away from the dead at his feet, and you watch him seath his blade, still bloodied as well. He follows after his father and seems colder than you have ever seen him. You don't beg for him to come back now. You don't think he will, either way. 

The waves rush onto the beach of Alqualondë and wipe away the stains on the sand, the evidence of what has happened here. In the distance you hear him shout commands at his soldiers and if you close your eyes, you could almost mistake his voice for that of his father. You think of the Oath, of angrily sworn words of violence, and you wonder if it is really worth all this.

But more than anything, you fear the answer. And so you never ask. 

*

Even in the cold on the Grinding Ice, the wind a knife on your skin, you are unravelled by how much you still love him, and how desperately you yearn for his burning hot hands on your body. He is not supposed to be in your thoughts, you know this. But you want to grab him by the shoulders and press your forehead against his and scream it at him that he is not deserving of your longing and not deserving of your love and you wish that you could hate him. For how you still want him, even though he left you to nights filled with nothing but darkness and ice. But when you do dream, you dream of him. And then when you wake, you remember so vividly the shape of his body next to yours, and like a ghost, it haunts you.

He is in your veins, and you cannot bleed him out, like a poison that you cannot drain from a wound. A shadow that you cannot shake. And he is like a fire that, even in the snow and the freezing cold that trembles you to your very core, will not ever stop burning in your heart.

*

The moon rises above you as you set foot on steady ground again. And the trumpets sound loudly through this new land until the silver tinted night makes way for warm and hopeful light. But your uncle is dead, and his sons are distressed and angry, and Maedhros is not there at all.

You keep your plans to yourself, away from council and meddling but still your father looks at you, the night you decide you will go get him back, as if he knows. He looks tired and old, and he fears for you, you can feel it in the way he lays his hand heavy on your shoulder. He does not speak. Perhaps because he knows that words will not sway you now. You only strap your bow to your back and wrap your bright blue cape around your shoulders. Your father does not look at you, and you are reminded of a night in Valinor, Maedhros in your chambers when he could not sleep the night before Formenos, a thousand lifetimes ago it seems now. Then too, unsaid goodbyes hung heavy in the air between you, afraid to speak the words, should they end up ringing true. You leave your father standing in the tent behind you as you make your way out of the camp and you do not look back. 

Perhaps you have sworn an oath as well, unwittingly and unspoken. A solemn promise disguised as a kiss, concealed threads woven between you and Maedhros as your bodies moved to the same rhythm in the dark. They pull at you now, long and fraying strings that tie you to him, as the blue and silver banners of your house fade in the mist. So into the darkness you go for him once more. You have followed Maedhros into unjust battle, all the way across thin ice cracking under your feet to an entirely new world, and you cannot stop now.

You would not know how, even if you wanted to.

* 

Were it not for the bright red shade of his hair and his voice that you have so longed to hear again answering to yours in song, you would not have recognized him upon the mountainside. He is barely a shadow, bright flames reduced to an ember, a small fire withering slowly but steadily. Your heart aches in your chest, a stinging physical thing, and you cry for him when he begs you for death. You are almost angry, a selfish and all-consuming echo in your mind, that he ran so far from you that you cannot reach him now. And you wonder if this is the price of your sins, but you steady your hand and nock an arrow either way, because you have only ever been able to give to him what he asked of you.

(Later, upon the back of the eagle, you wrap his bleeding wrist in a torn-off piece of your cape. His red against your blue. But his body is thin and tired, and it does not, will not ever again, fit against yours like it used to.)

*

He heals quickly, his red becomes brighter and his fire grows higher once more. But his brothers are angry still, even more so when Maedhros gives the heavy crown to your father, and their thinly built peace is veiled by their fury. He leaves again, and this time he does not speak, only kisses you fiercely and urgently, like he is trying to remember the taste of something he can never have again. 

And maybe this is _your_ curse, you think as you watch him slip out of your reach again. A cruel punishment for your sins. That you chase and chase and cannot ever let him go but cannot ever hold on to him, either. 

*

Neither of you  are ever the same again, it is exactly as you once feared. Sometimes you wake in your chambers in Hithlum, and in the dark you forget that you are no longer on the ice. Those nights, it is not until you have walked the halls of Mithrim, the torches lighting your way, your hand sliding across the walls to find smooth marble, that you believe yourself to be somewhere the freezing water underneath fragile ice cannot touch you anymore. 

When you visit Maedhros in his realm, his wounds have long healed and he wields his sword better with his left hand than he had even with his right. He is proud and regal, though he wears no crown, when he welcomes you and your father to his stone fortress. Clearly built upon the fear that someone would come and try to take it from him. But when you truly look at him, he is but a ghost. Weary and tired. The Oath sleeps, but it is not gone, and you can see it in the dark circles underneath his eyes, the way he paces in front of the fire with a worried expression on his pale face when he doesn’t notice you watching from the doorway. You wonder if he dreams of Morgoth’s malicious whispers in his ears, of freezing dungeons or his right hand shackled, of begging you for death. 

You wonder if he sleeps at all.

*

You leave the talk of strategy and battle to him and your father, you are no ruler and no councillor, and business is not the reason why you joined the King on his travels here. You remove yourself from the room and you walk Himring and pretend it does not remind you of Angband in its coldness and the howling wind outside the windows. In the distance, you hear the melodious playing of a harp, followed by a voice that you know though you have not heard it in a long while. You follow the sound of it until you come to an open door at the end of the hallway. Maglor sits there by the window and though you have not heard his song before, you feel as if you recognize the sadness in it. He sings of heartache, and you cannot stop yourself from listening. It’s not until the song ends that he notices your presence, and at once stands up to face you.

“Cousin. I had heard you would join the King here.”

His stance is hostile, defensive. They all think the crown belongs to their brother, and though it was not your choice, they will not forgive you for it either.

“Maglor, you look well. What are  _ you  _ doing here?”

Maglor raises an eyebrow. “Pretending to respectfully welcome the High King to the East.”

Amongst the Sons of Fëanor, they have always claimed Maglor to be the most gentle, but you find none of that gentleness now. He circles you like you are prey and there is venom in his eyes that reminds you so much of his father that it frightens you.

“Fingon the Valiant, they call you now, do they not? So like your father, you are. Clean the blood off your sword and pretend you never swung it, while they cheer your name and curse my own.”

You realize what he was singing of right then. Alqualondë. You have not spoken of it in centuries, though it has kept you awake at night more times than you are able to count. There is a challenge in Maglor’s words, a fight that he is trying to start, and you find yourself defensive as well. 

“We did not know-”

“Did not know you were killing your own?” He interrupts you.

“Did not know,  _ cousin _ , that they had not attacked you first.”

Maglor scoffs. He almost intimidates you with it. He looks so angry, in the pale light of the room, and you think the reason why he starts this fight with you now, is because he does not want to carry the weight of the guilt alone.

“I’m not innocent, Maglor, but the blame is not mine as much as it is yours. Your father’s words have cursed you all, and you would do well to realize it before it kills you like it killed him.”

He comes close then. For a moment you think he will strike you. For a moment, you think you would let him.

“You know  _ nothing _ .”

His breath falls hard, and his shoulders heave with it. And you think you have hit him where it hurts the most.

“I know that I think of Alqualondë every day. I know that since that forsaken day, I have not once lifted my sword without remembering the blood upon it. I know they only call me valiant because I did for Maedhros what you were all too cowardly to do and I  _ know  _ that that is why you truly hate me, Maglor. Because it was  _ me _ , who saved him.”

Maglor drops his chin to his chest and defeat seems to weigh down his shoulders. He looks as haunted as his eldest brother then. And you wish that you could forget for a moment, how young and carefree you all were when you were safe in Valinor. You think that then, it would hurt you less to see them all so battered now.

“You rescued him. And we are forever in your debt for it, cousin. But Maedhros is not saved. He is not saved from the memories, he is not saved from the doom that awaits us, from the Oath that poisons the blood in our veins a little more each day. You did not save him from any of it. Only death can.”

You do not know what to say to him. Maglor does not lie, and you know it all too well. You have all been molded and shaped and twisted into things so achingly different from what you started out as. Maedhros even more so than anybody else. He is like a sculpture, made from marble cracked at the edges over the long and weary years. And every time you try to restore it, it only breaks that little more under the weight of your hesitant hands, until there is nothing left of it but dust.

You turn around and leave Maglor to his harp, the room feels too small for the both of you now, and the red tapestries on the walls remind you of things you would rather forget. But Maglor’s voice calls out to you once more, and you stop in the doorway but you do not turn around.

“You love him,” He says quietly. “And you will pay for it.”

You do look back at him now, and if you did not know better, you would think it to be pity that you find in the sullen expression on his face.

“I know.” You say, and you close the door behind you as you leave.

You have known this for a lifetime. That you love him too much. That you have given him too many pieces of yourself, in the idle hope that they would fill up the empty holes in his chest. Shades of your blue that are now red, that you cannot ever get back. But you don’t mind this anymore, that your heart is no longer yours alone. 

You have long made your peace with it.

*

When your father dies, you do not cry, and you do not scream.

They forge a new crown for you, because you cannot stand to look at the one he left in the glass case in his chambers before he strode into battle. And when you look in the mirror after a sleepless and haunting night, you hate for the first time how much you look like him.

And you are  _ angry _ though you do not say it out loud. Angry that he challenged Morgoth so impulsively, angry that he faced him alone, and that he did not come back to you when you still needed him. When you were not ready to lead. Angry that his absence has left a shadow on your people so dark that you fear you will never be able to bring light to them again.

*

The entire room bows to you when you are crowned. But all the way at the back, Maedhros stands tall in black armor instead of formal robes and catches your gaze. There is grief in his eyes, subtle but unmistakable and it makes you wish for your father’s hand on your shoulder, his reassuring voice telling you that it will be alright. You shiver where you sit upon your unwanted throne and Maedhros does not look away.

It is not until much later, when your halls are empty and silent again and the loneliness of it all burns like poisonous and suffocating smoke in your lungs, that you realize he was grieving for  _ you _ .

*

Morgoth is down a Silmaril, a blow has been struck to Angband and Maedhros sends you letters asking for a union. So you go to him, and you find it almost easy to pretend now, that you do not see the destructive fire of an Oath burning again behind his eyes.

* 

At night, after hours of meetings and talk of battle, he pulls at you with such a tight grip that it makes your blood boil in your veins and your breath stutter in your throat and you follow him to his chambers and into his bed and you fall apart under his touch like you always have. His hair is longer now than it had been in Valinor, and it is the only thing still bright about him. It is such a waste, that you are both dull and greyish now instead of vivid and fluorescent as you once were. Even when you tangle together upon silk sheets, his skin pressed so closely to yours and heat between your bodies that almost feels burning. But you are two shadows intermingling, and you do not recognize the shape you form together. 

Afterwards, Maedhros stares up at the ceiling as you stand and tie the strings of your tunic back up. His pale chest rises and falls slowly with each breath. There is a scar there, right across his heart, where your hand had been not even ten minutes ago, as if Morgoth had tried to steal it right out of his chest. But that heart only belongs to three things, all of them blinding and cursed, and not one bit of it is anyone else's. 

"Please tell me you are going into battle for the right reasons, Maedhros. Not for those poisonous jewels." 

You plead and you hope that it will make him look at you, but his eyes do not move. 

"I made promises, Findekáno. I have to keep them." 

"I will not help you fight for forsaken things!" 

Maedhros only sighs and sits upright, the sheets slide back to reveal the scarred white skin of his hips, where your fingertips have left bruises in their wake. He looks at you, but you find no anger at your shouted words. Only that same deep sadness, and you can't seem to remember a time that it was not there. 

"Yes, you will, Fingon. You always have." He says. And for the first time, it is you who looks away. 

You slam the door behind you when you leave him and you wish for but a moment that you had loved a little less. But you are blue. And he is red. And it has never stopped you.

You will go to every war, and ride into every battle for him. You will kneel at his feet and let the color drip from his skin unto yours, burning hot, angry and violent and cursed, and you will not rise again, until you are drenched in it as well. 

*

At the end, your people rally to you, and your brother, older and wiser than you can remember him, fights at your side once more. You smile, splatters of the enemy's vile and black blood high upon your cheeks and forehead, as you hear Fëanorion cries of battle, and see banners of red and gold approach you in the distance and you know, you finally  _ know _ , that Maedhros has come for you as well. 

But he does not reach you. You can feel the ties that bound you to him sever slowly, and the silent promises you have made to him without ever even meaning to, fade slowly from your mind. You have always known that all prices must be paid. And your debt is settled as a whip pulls tight around your chest, and you meet your end with the quick and deadly swing of the sharp blade of an axe.

But it is, you think at last, as a final breath leaves your throat, not such a terrible fate to suffer. 

  
To have burned so brightly, so brilliantly  _ red _ in the raging fire that Maedhros has built, that you can still feel the memory of it in your bones as you wither and wane and scatter, finally, like ashes in the wind. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fine Line by Harry Styles, give it a listen if you can!


End file.
